I am back on the World Building Series. (If you missed the first two parts they can be found here and here)

So in this post I am going to talk about Water.

If we are talking in the bounds of our natural laws, water is important for life.

It is why we’re always looking for water on other planets and moons when we feel the need to fling space probes into the Solar System to take pictures. It is like the very first step, if you have water there is at least a possibility of life even if the possibility is some single celled organism.

The Earth has numerous geological processes that are happening within and upon it continuously. Heat from the accretion of the planet is continually lost and so this ongoing loss of heat is what drives these processes.

Why is this important?

Plate Tectonics

The Earth’s crust is made up of giant “plates”. They are generated and destroyed by this heat we just discussed. New plates are created at the divergent (constructive) plate boundary. This is where the hot rock that is heated at the Earth’s core rises up. The tectonic plates are pushed apart and rising magma (the melted rock) from the mantle reaches the surface.

As a fantasy writer I build new worlds to tell my story on. Since I write large fantasies that span trilogies (yep, I can’t seem to contain my stories within a single novel) I get pretty in-depth with my worlds.

Now despite being a world builder I am not the sort of writer that includes pages of just world description in huge chunks. Personally I find that dull, instead I build my worlds and then weave them throughout the story, bringing in information gently. I prefer this way in my writing and my reading. I don’t want extensive descriptions about a world that covers 4 pages right at the start before we even meet a character.